1981 Accord Build

The day it came home.

Found her at a wrecking yard, waiting to get crushed. I told my friend about it, and he offered to buy it from the yard for $200. It was too clean for such an old car. No rust, fairly straight, and pretty clean interior.

Gauge Cluster

Only 5,000 miles on the clock! Or 105,000... or 205,000, who knows. And the little green square under the tach, that was a sweet LED display that had the letter of the gear you were in. Wish I had good pics of that thing in action!

All togehter now!

I had the head rebuilt as well. There's a LONG story behind just the cylinder head alone. The long story short is that I tried to find a non-CVCC head from Canada, and it didn't fit because it was the wrong year. Then I tried to have the original head rebuilt, and it was cracked. So I found a cylinder head that had been pulled out of a car and was sitting in some guy's yard. It was old and nasty but had a good casting. A shop took my cracked head, and the crappy, bug-infested head, and build one good one out of all the parts.

Interior back in with 5-speed gauges.

I didn't want the PRDN indicator, and the 3-speed shift points on the speedo. So I found a new set of gauges at the wrecking yard. I also pressure washed the carpets, and repainted the center console. They came out looking like new!

I got tired of the wheels.

So this car, has this crazy lug pattern. You know how most Hondas are 4x100, or 4x114? This was 4x120. RIDICULOUSLY hard to find wheels for it. So I just decided to work with what I had. Some early Mazdas used 4x120 as well, but they had RWD offsets. So those wheels never looked right on the Accords, IMO.

Road trip!

Decided to install MegaJolt.

After getting 3 bad rebuilt distributors, and not wanting to pay $300 for the next level up. I decided to completely get rid of the distributor. MegaJolt is a crank-fired ignition system, that uses Ford's EDIS ignition components to make it easy to build a fully programmable ignition system for any car. And CHEAP. I got the MegaJolt for around $160. Then I found an eBay auction with all the rest of the EDIS parts already pulled, and shipped to me for $100. So for $260, you can build one of these for your car. AWESOME.

Bench test.

Here it is hooked to my computer. Wanted to make sure it functioned before I went through the hassle of building a wiring harness and installing the trigger wheel and VR sensor.
Here's a closeup of the trigger wheel in action (my first attempt at the trigger wheel):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQdK--uMrY4
And here's a video (the coolest one, IMO) of the MegaJolt interface running from vehicle startup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1E8jsiFdFc

The trigger wheel.

This was what I came up with. My first trigger wheel, that I tried to mount myself was sloppy and had a tendency to come loose from the crank pulley. I decided it would be best to have a machinist make me up something super sweet.

VR sensor bracket.

This is the sensor that reads the trigger wheel and sends back pulses to the EDIS system. With this setup, and a MAP sensor, the computer can PRECISELY control your spark, and you can program for any MAP/RPM combo. This sweet ass setup is thanks to Ford in the 90s, and was on just about every one of their cars. So yes, I have a grip of Ford parts running my Honda engine.

Original Radio

Found an original radio at the wrecking yard. The slot in the dash is too shallow to put in any other radio without it sticking out. So I decided the single speaker in the dash would be cool to have running.

Speaker mount and clock.

This is where the speaker goes in the dash, just above the radio. And the sweet "digital" clock I found. The numbers flip over every minute. Here's a video of the radio and clock in action. Notice the reversed knobs on the radio!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3hh1ctT6rE

Tired of 4x120.

As I mentioned earlier. I wanted wheels on my car. I got so tired of the 4x120 setup, I decided to convert it to the standard 4x100, so I can put whatever wheel I want on it! I used 82 Accord hubs and pressed them right into the wheel bearings. The stock brakes were also captured rotors (behind the hub), so to change rotors, you had to press apart the hub and wheel bearing. I wanted rotor-over-hub, and the 82 Accord hubs let me do that. Not to mention the sliders on the stock brakes are unlubricated, and the rotors are NOT vented! To convert the rear to 4x100, I got rid of the Accord drums and installed some disc brakes from an 87 Prelude Si.

Also installed Konis.

While I had the front end apart, I figured I might as well throw in my Koni inserts. Basically, it requires you cutting the top off of the OEM strut, and gutting them. Then you slide the Koni inserts inside your OEM strut housings.

Front brakes.

This is the new front brake setup. 89 CRX rotors with 86 Accord calipers. It just bolted right on. Gotta love it. So now it's rotor over hub, and the crappy, sliderless, unvetned rotors are gone. And these rotors are about 1/2 inch bigger than stock. YAY!

Rear brakes.

Missing good pics of the rear brakes. But this is me test fitting the Prelude rear rotors on. $25 per side at the wrecking yard. And everything actually works great. I thought I'd need new rotors or something! I wound up repainting the calipers and cleaning them all up. Looks great now. Wish I had better pics here.

How she sits now.

The 4x100 conversion allowed me to run any wheels I wanted. Oh yeah, I also CUT the front springs to lower it. There are no aftermarket springs available anywhere. And these don't have flat springs on the top, so they were okay to cut. The spring rates increased a bit, but it firms it up nicely, and the Konis seem to be happy with them.
As you can see, I haven't done the rear suspension yet. The front is lowered about 2 inches. So I'm going to install the rear Konis this weekend, and cut that much out of the springs. Should look sweet when it's sitting all nice and level!